Umineko no Naku Koro ni - 19
This episode takes a bit of a step back as it explains more about “Gretel”’s past. Her classmates were… stereotypical to say the least, but at least it’s good to see a bit more attention for her, and a bit of a more detailed report of what happened to Eva after the massacre of the third arc.
Maria was surprisingly tolerable in this episode, though. There’s one thing that I agree that the anime adaptation screwed up: the first few arcs showed her evil side way too much. The past two arcs actually gave her a bit of a character. The way she teased Battler with his fear of flight and how she was resurrected by Ange through magic (again, questioning how much magic there is in this world, and whether the world she came from is the same that Meta-Battler came from).
This episode also showed that even the starting events of each arc don’t necessarily have to be the same: we don’t know whether Rosa confessed about how she killed Beatrice in every single arc, because in this arc we see how Kinzou himself decides to attend the family meeting due to Krauss’ incompetence. This episode also raises the question: is Kinzou really alive? We’ve seen him a few times, but that says nothing: we’ve also seen Beatrice once in a while, and she too clearly wasn’t there. The only question is the point at which Natsuhi talked to him in the first arc: I’m still not sure whether that arc was completely free of magic, or whether it too had magical elements in it.
By the way, now that we’re nearing the end of this series’ airtime: has a second season already been announced? I know that the “no naku koro ni”-franchise should be popular enough to warrant a sequel that animates the answer arcs, but lately I’ve seen too many series that are in need of a sequel, yet never ended up getting one.
Rating: * (Good)